Active Mitigation / Rotation

Active Mitigation

Keep active when physical damage reduction is needed. A good rule of thumb is to use a charge when you’re at max (2), and save a charge to counter an enemy’s special attack or to react to unstable health. Only reduces physical damage.

Pain Management

As most of your survival is reactive healing, you should always aim to keep a decent pool of pain available so that you can quickly recover health. If you’re not facing any immediate danger, use that time to save up around 60 to 80 pain. If you have high pain but don’t need healing, use it on Demon Spikes maintenance, Soul Cleave for the damage, or choose a number of talents to spend it.

Soul Fragments

Primarily generated through Shear, these purple orbs spawn far away and are consumed with Soul Cleave. On consumption they provide a small amount of healing. For the biggest heal, build up a full stack of 5 to further boost your Soul Cleave. However, keep in mind that generating Soul Fragments is a lower priority than other resources and mitigation.

Use to protect against damage with an absorption shield. It works especially well against damage-over-time effects or frequent small attacks because it will always reduce them by a moderate amount. For the most effective absorb shield, use at five Soul Fragments.

When you Soul Cleave, there’s a moderate chance that you might gain a short Metamorphosis from consuming Soul Fragments. That will heal you if you’re below 30%, increase your max health and armor, and generate extra pain and Soul Fragments. Use that opportunity to heal yourself, prioritizing Shear for the extra Soul Fragments.

Cooldowns

Damage reduction cooldown. Activate before an incoming attack, or to survive dangerously low health. Without talents it only works on a single target. It has a short cooldown of 1 min with a powerful effect of 40% damage reduction, so don’t be afraid to use it.

Health, healing, and damage reduction cooldown. Use when you have dangerously low health to heal to 30%, increase your max health and armor, and rapidly generate pain and Soul Fragments which can be turned into healing via Soul Cleave. Can also be used as a personal damage boost, especially in AoE, because it allows you to use Soul Cleave very often.